Foxtail Tales

SUMMARY: So small, so dangerous

Started with my response to a Facebook post about dogs wearing anti-foxtail covers over their heads.

They can be beautiful, early in the morning, glistening with dew

I've experienced two unpleasant foxtails encounters, and others not so bad, with my dogs. In the early '90s, one evening while out in our big yard, my husky Sheba started sneezing and couldn't stop, and then started sneezing blood. Ran her to the nearby open-at-night emergency vet , where they sedated her and found and removed a teeny tiny foxtail way up in her sinus. Expensive. And of course the toll on the dog.

And Jake, in the late '90s, we were out of town at an agility competition--we went hiking at a nearby lake one evening and the dogs went swimming [this is where I discovered that Remington loved loved loved swimming; that's a different story]. Foxtails in prime sticking form surrounded the trail to the lake. Back at the car, I must've spent half an hour trying to get them out of Jake's long silky coat and tail.

A trail like this: Narrow; foxtails ripe and abundant.
All it takes is the dog to stick his nose into those for just a moment...

There they are, almost ripe and each
seed ready to torture a dog

The next morning, before the agility competition began, he started scratching at his ear (he had long floppy long-haired ears) and shaking his head. He was prone to ear infections, so I always carried special goop from the vet.  I figured he'd gotten water in his ear while swimming and an infection was starting.  Applied goop per the normal schedule. We went to the vet when we got home--actually the next morning when they opened. Vet said, nope not an infection, but was able to pull a foxtail out of his ear fairly easily without anesthesia--he said that's because the goop had softened it so much that it couldn't stick in anything and he could just grab it with long tweezers(?) and glide it out, no anesthesia. Disaster averted.

So, not too expensive, but of course going to the vet just costs.

Tika had extremely dense fur. Like a husky's. Fun fact: Dogs have, on average, 15,000 hairs per square inch. A husky can have up to 83,000.  (Otters have even more!) Tika had such dense hair, particularly with her winter coat, that I'd have trouble seeing even a speck of her skin.  Her hairs were not particularly long--in memory, I think 1-1.5 inches. But they were perfectly straight and, as it turned out, exactly the length and texture of a foxtail seed. When she managed to dash through a field of foxtails, you couldn't *see* whether she had any in her coat, even though she'd have dozens and dozens.  You'd have to hunt. Wrong kind of treasure hunt, but it was what it was. (Not something I encouraged, I assure you.)

Once, when petting her at home, I found a foxtail halfway embedded into her skin. Fortunately, when I tugged gingerly at it, it pulled out fairly easily with minimal blood. I cleaned the spot and added a little neosporin, and no infection. I tried not to think about what might have happened if I hadn't accidentally found it.

"Bubble head" protectors--friends have posted about their dogs wearing them for several years now. Two people today recommended OutFox brand. Expensive. But compared to some of the horror stories shared in comments to that post...

Note: I have so many photos of foxtails! They are gorgeous, actually. These photos came from different years and locations.

Tika the Very Naughty Nose Wizard

SUMMARY: She loved food. Even on the agility course.

This is expanded version of a Facebook post Mar 2, 2020.

P.S. Food is not allowed on the agility course in most cases!

Tika was an absolute food hog. We were competing at the Masters level in USDAA--already had Silver Championship and Platinum Tournament Master--and one day, we were flying around a course with her way ahead of me as usual, when she suddenly skidded to a halt, veered off in an entirely different direction, completely ignored my attempts to get her attention, trotted about 40 feet away from where we had been to the edge of the ring, and nosed a tiny piece of some kind of food out of the grass! Then turned, blasted back to me, and continued full speed with what we had been doing. Seriously, how can a dog detect that tiny a piece of food, at that distance, at that speed, doing something that you'd think requires a lot of attention to avoid killing yourself??

But she wouldn’t eat bananas.**

(BTW: It was Steeplechase. Qualified and came in 2nd. Crazy dog; how she managed with all that wasted time, who knows!)

-----

** By contrast, Jake would tear things apart and escape from his crate to get a banana.

Terminology for non-agilityers--

• Qualifying (Q): Meeting the requirements for the class/run (time and faults or points) to earn a "leg" towards eventual titles.
• Silver Championship: Earning enough Qs to achieve multiple championships.
• Tournament Platinum:  Means she was really good at qualifying (had earned many Qs) for the often-challenging three classes that are eventually featured at the national championships. At the time, that was the highest title you could earn for collecting Tournament Qs.
• Steeplechase: Designed to be very fast. It's often the hardest of the Tournament classes to earn Qs in, because so many dogs are so very fast and, to Q,  you must be in the top 15% of the dogs running that course. (This is a simplification, but close enough.)

Photo by Sarah Hitzeman

Things That Super Frightened My Pups

SUMMARY: Brave dogs, scardey dogs

I'm talking about things that are way outside the norm, things that could flat-out terrify them.

Who	What	Notes
Amber	Nothing that I remember
Sheba	Loma Prieta Earthquake and aftershocks	She'd lie on my chest for hours (45-lb husky), panting and shaking, eyes looking like she was going into shock. (Amber would just look up and go back to sleep)
Remington	Smoke alarm testing	He'd go hide in the farthest point of our long half-acre yard and not come out for ages
Jake	Nothing that I remember
Tika	Vet's office	In her last few years, would give her a little sedative ahead of time to take the edge off
Boost	Pet stores. Unfamiliar uncarpeted floors.	Various other random things
Chip	Thunder, fireworks	O...M...G
Zorro	Nothing that I can think of

Updating History

SUMMARY: Recreating photos of yesteryear.

Do you love the photos that people take while trying to recreate photos from their youth? Like this site(43 people who flawlessly recreated their childhood photos)--which has ads galore and you have to click to see each next one rather than them being on the same page, but wonderful photos!

Seems to me that I've attempted these things at random times in the past, but remember only a couple of recent ones, and they're not complete attempts to match clothing and location, just positions.

Fair warning, there is melancholy in these posts, as well as fun.

(1) Even 2 years ago we knew that we wouldn't be able to get my mom up to the top of this dome. Even less likely now.  Dad really wanted it to happen (he took the photo), but now he'll never see it even if we do successfully recreate the whole thing.  Above Olmsted Point in Yosemite.

1962-----

2013--

We had to convince dad 2 years ago that it was not the stroll in the park that he remembered from when he was in his 30s, and that he'd have a rough time of it and mom just wouldn't be able to do it unless someone carried her.  You ever think, in retrospect, that Dad wanted this photo so much that we should've found a way to get them  up there?  Well, I had a wonderful time the day that we found this spot and took this photo and I'll at least cherish that.  I wonder--any chance that we could get all 3 of the oldest of us up there AND find someone(s) to carry mom up?


-----------------------------------
(2)  When I learned that Boost would not be around much longer, I wanted to redo some of the old photos. This one, not in the same location, not with the same clothing, but the main characters are here.

2005

2015

And, of course, these (which I already posted back in January):

2002: Tika, Jake, Remington

2015: Tika, Boost, Chip, taken as I knew that Tika couldn't be around much longer. Already having trouble sitting comfortably--but she managed it for me, briefly. All three of them were such good dogs on this day.

The Photographic Record

SUMMARY: Counting JPEGs, plus dogs on chairs.

I have this many mostly unique JPEGs labeled with the following names of my dogs:

	Boost	2786
	Tika	2720
	Jake	336
	Remington	37  210
	Sheba	10
	Amber	26

The numbers make some sense, because Amber and Sheba were before I became a photography monster and before digital, so I don't have that many to begin with, and I've scanned only a few of those.

Amber was my first dog and my special pal, whereas Sheba, although an important part of the family, always treated us like a nice place to visit between excursions into the wild, so either I didn't take as many of her or I didn't feel inclined to scan in as many as for Amber.

Remington, as my first agility dog and the first one I really thought about documenting in photos--and probably my main Heart Dog so far--has quite a few more than the earlier dogs in my photo albums, but still many fewer than the later dogs. Somewhere around 2003 I started having my film photos scanned to disk at the same time they were processed, so have a few digitized photos of him, but the rest I scanned in one at a time, and that's time consuming, so haven't done many.

(But...huh...there are a bunch more photos on his assorted web pages, and they don't show up in my disk search that found only 37. Hm. Wonder how I labeled them? Early in my digital photo age, I had a tendency to label photos like "Rem" or "dog" or "R". Aha! Yep, that revealed a lot more than 37.)

Anyway, he died in 2003, a few months before I bought my first digital camera in December of 2003, when Tika was almost 3. My dog photo count started going up faster and faster.

Jake was around just long enough (he died in 2007) for me to also get my first digital SLR in 2006 -- and that's when things really started taking off.

How I've managed to have more of Boost than of Tika, not entirely sure--except that by the time I got the digital camera, the fascination with Tika as a "new dog" was long gone, whereas I've been shooting digital like crazy for Boost's whole life.

Makes me want to go lounge in a chair with my dogs. Or a bed. Oooh, that sounds good.

Snooker Point Averages

SUMMARY: While I'm having fun with my database--

NOTE: In USDAA, you need 37 points for a Q; in CPE, only 32 at the highest level, down to merely 24 at the lowest level.

The maximum points in a CPE Snooker is 51; in USDAA it might be 51 or it might be 58.

Boost's Snooker stats:

• CPE: 45% Q rate (10 of 22--8 of those >=37 so Qing in USDAA); average points/run: 29.5
• USDAA: 13% Q rate (16 of 120); average points/run: 25.5 [deep sigh]

Remington:

• CPE: 33% Q rate (2 of 3); average points/run: 24.3
  
• USDAA: 20.5% Q rate (8 of 39); average points/run: 27.4

Tika:

• CPE: 73% Q rate (43 of 59--38 of those >=37 pts); average points/run: 38.15
  
• USDAA: 50% Q rate (88 of 176); average points/run: 32

Jake:

• CPE: 63% Q rate (19 of 30--17 of those >=37 pts); average points/run: 31.8
  
• USDAA: 61% Q rate (37 of 61); average points/run: 35.12 

You can see why I always expected Jake to make Top Ten in Snooker, at least in performance where his Q rate was 66% and SuperQ rate was 25%. Just not enough dogs competing in performance in our area at the time to get the Top Ten points. But I can still picture him running through a course, ears flying in the breeze--and never* knocking bars!

*What, never? No, never! What, NEVER? Well...hardly ever.

Filling In the Blanks

SUMMARY: CPE paperwork.

Background:

• CPE has 7 classes: Standard, Jumpers, Wildcard, Colors, Jackpot (aka Gamblers), Snooker, and Full House.
• CPE has 6 levels (1 through 5, and C)
• Dogs who have earned titles in other organizations can start at Level 3, which is what I did with Remington and Boost. (More on Jake, below.)
• Currently, to complete a numbered level (e.g., level 2), you need twice that many Q[ualifying score]s (e.g., 4)  in Standard and that many Qs (e.g., 2)  in each of the other classes. 
• Variant: It was different when Remington, Jake, and Tika were working on their C-ATCHes--fewer were required at each level--but it changed to this current system while Boost was only halfway through her Level 3 titles.
• Completing your Level 5 is your C-ATCH.
• After completing Level 5, you can optionally move to Level C, the level with the most strict qualifying requirements, to work on your C-ATE. (You can also opt to stay in level 5 and earn multiple C-ATCHes. Lots of people do this. We, however, think that we always like the highest level of challenge.)

Here are the trusty pieces of paper that traveled around in my trial gear for a very long time, to show how many Qs we've had to earn to get to where we are.

Jake's C-ATCH:
When CPE first started, if your dog had a championship in another organization, you could start at Level 4, which is what I did with Jake.  So, between that and the lower number of required Qs, Jake needed 48 Qs to work his way up to his C-ATCH.

Tika's C-ATCH:
I made the mistake of entering Tika in Level 1 at her first-ever CPE trial because I didn't realize that, once you had a Q at that level, you had to complete everything at that level. So she had to work through all the Qs at level 1 and 2 to get to where my previous dogs *started*.

As a result, she had to earn 88 Qs to get to her C-ATCH. At least the level 1 and 2 courses were pretty easy.

Tika's C-ATE:
Completing 5000 points (up to around 250 Qs) at Level C is your C-ATE. Tika did it with 229 (this sheet has 2 more listed beyond her C-ATE).

Boost's C-ATCH:
I was smarter with Boost and started her at Level 3.

Here's her sheet--still minus that one dang Colors! Two chances this coming weekend to fill in that teasing blank.

Because of the rules change while Boost was still partly in Level 3, she had to earn more Qs in some level 3 and all Level 4 and 5 classes than my other dogs did. When she gets that final Q, she'll have needed 90 Qs--more than Tika needed going all the way up from Level 1, and all at the higher levels.

And Then...
Tika's C-ATE-2 sheet now has 7 Qs on it. Only 220 more to go. :-)

And Boost's C-ATE sheet already has 19 on it. Hmmm... with Boost's lower Q rate, could Tika earn her C-ATE-2 before Boost earned her C-ATE? Hmmm... .... .... but noooo, move along, nothing to see here.

Food Rewards?

SUMMARY: Me no eat, me run.

There's an interesting article here about dogs who won't work for food. The author makes a provocative claim:

Food is something every dog has every day. Unless they are ill, there should be no reason for our dogs to turn down any snacks we offer them. But many dog owners claim their dogs won’t work for them for food treats as a reward. How can this be? Dogs are scavengers by nature. Could it be something we humans are doing that puts them off sometimes?

After reading the article, it becomes clear that he's really addressing muggles^* with dogs, not "dog people," most likely not people who compete in dog sports. And he does raise good points for that set of people.

However, he seemed to imply that all dogs and owners fall into the same category, and I felt compelled to respond after reading the article and the follow-on comments:

To continue with what a couple of people have started: I have had four dogs with whom I compete in Dog Agility. They all have taken almost any kind of food reward in low-activity situations--say, working on trick training, no matter how active the trick is. But insert running and toys into the equation, and my mixed-breed (Jake -- sheltie? BC?) would push food out of the way to get to the toy, and my current border collie (Boost) will not take food at all in these cases (say, for downing on the table or stopping in the contact zone). Even a high-value treat like meat, she takes only if I insist and often just holds it in her mouth, doesn't swallow it. "Me not stop eat food, me want go!" Apparently the only negative connotation for the food is that they have to stop long enough to take it and swallow it, and they don't want to stop. I guess.

Even as a puppy, my border collie wasn't excited about dinnertime for months; was more interested in watching my other dog eat or in wondering where her toy was.

My agility instructors have all given instructions on how you can teach a dog to take a treat as a reward, because there are cases (such as those mentioned above) where you want a calm reward, not an energetic reward, and it's basically the process of making taking a treat a trick that is then rewarded with the toy, so eventually the value of the toy reward transfers to the food reward. I haven't pursued this much, but I've seen it work for others.

So, these are not typical dogs or typical owner, but they don't seem to fall into the categories in this post.

---

Tika, of course, places a higher value on food than on almost anything--she'll spend 30 seconds at the end of a dogwalk (in class) sniffing for microscopic pieces of food, or veer out of her way when running full tilt on course because some earlier human dropped a piece of kibble in the lawn somewhere.

What do the rest of you think? What's your experience?

---

^*muggle, of course, being from the Harry Potter books and means specifically "a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world," but is gradually being adopted to mean "a person who lacks a [fill in the blank] ability and is not part of the [fill in the blank] world"--for example, geocachers refer to nongeocachers as muggles.

geocaching, well, that's a whole nuther thing.

Funny, What One Remembers (Or Not)

SUMMARY: Big Qs in (my) history.

I guess some things DO get to be old hat after a while. Especially as agility has been around longer and longer, and there are more and more trials where people can earn Qs, and as I earn more and more titles at higher levels with more dogs.

I can remember so clearly when Jake earned his MAD, landing on the table at the end of the gamble (who uses tables for gambles any more in USDAA? gone!). I floated for days. People I barely knew rushed over to give me hugs. A MAD was a huge deal back then--for me, because it was my first, and for everyone, because they still weren't all that common.

I remember most of the NADAC Standard run on which he earned his NATCH. I remember thinking that he'd been slow and wasn't sure whether he'd actually made time, so didn't even know whether to celebrate. And I remember that the people at the score table told me to go away and not bother them and shielded the score sheets with their bodies so I couldn't even look over their shoulders, and wouldn't even tell me what the Standard Course Time was so I could compare the run on my video. That's when I decided never to go back to that club's trials. That was up near Placerville, in a beautiful little park whose name I no longer recall. [video appears below, after some delay to think about it, apparently--from 2001. Starts out looking funky but it will display a course map and then our run:]

I also remember clearly the exact gamble on which he earned his ADCH. A gamble that I had been chasing up and down the state, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend to try to get, and I finally got it on a course I didn't walk, right here at one of our own trials on the soccer practice lawn at Cal State Hayward (before it became Cal State University, East Bay).

I remember where I finished Remington's NATCH--also a gamble--up in Eureka at a pleasant site, the only time I went to that trial, desperate for

I remember Tika's first-ever USDAA run, which was a Novice Jumpers run (back when there were Novice and Starters, depending on whether you'd ever titled with a dog before). I halfway remember the whole course. I remember that she was super-fast and knocked a single bar. Since that was back when only Standard was titling in Novice/Starters, Jumpers was time plus faults--and she *still* came in 2nd with the 5-fault bar penalty! That was in the covered arena at the horse park in City of Industry in southern California.

I remember where I finished Tika's ADCh, on a Snooker course at Nunes Agility Field in Turlock, watching Rachel Sanders and her dog once again do our course but much much faster, and thinking that once again we'd be one out of the SuperQs as we had been so often. But then, woo-hoo, turns out everyone else didn't do so well, so we came in (2nd to rachel) but picked up that final Super-Q. (Ah, ha, see the course map and read about it in this blog post ... videos below:)

But the things I DON'T remember these days are telling: Although I thought that Tika took forever to get her first Jumpers Q (ha! maybe 18 nonQs?), I have no recollection at all of where or when it finally came. I have no idea when or where I finished her ADCH-Silver, although I do know it was a Standard Q that she needed. I have no idea where or when or even what class it was when she finished her ADCH all over again in Performance--perhaps because it was coming so easily to us by then. F'rinstance, when she moved to performance, she started getting SuperQs in snooker more often than not. She stopped knocking bars pretty much and started Quing in almost everything all the time (sometimes seemed that way, anyway).

I don't even remember anything about the time, place, or circumstances of her more advanced titles, the bronze performance ADCh, the bronze lifetime, the silver lifetime, dang, not even the gold lifetime although that was only earlier this year! It's all just whipping by, pleasing me, but not with the emotional intensity needed to burn it into my memory banks.

I remember where Boost first earned a Masters Jumpers Q, after more than 40 attempts--at Dixon May Fairgrounds. It completed her MAD, but I was more excited about the simple fact of getting a Jumpers Q. I bought a cake the next day for everyone to share. But i don't remember WHEN it was or anything about the course itself.

Will I remember the course, time, and place of Boost's first-ever Super-Q this last weekend? It was so amazing to me to have finished that course clean, and then for it to be a Super-Q, too. At the moment, it's seared into my brain, but will it be in another year? Or two? or three? I think it might be--the emotional impact was huge. Of course only time will tell.

Meanwhile--thanks, susan P, for this gift of a photo (honoring our Super-Q) from the trial photographer Bamfoto (so typical, one ear inside out and the other flying!):

A Little Nostalgia

SUMMARY: USDAA Nationals, 2001

Have been loading some old photos onto my computer and organizing them. Fond memories.

This is before all the Tournament finals were combined into one event. Only the Grand Prix finals took place in Del Mar; the rest was filled with fun games and a regular qualifying DAM team event.

Jake the Semidachshund and I teamed with Mysti the Border Collie and Haley the Zimbabwe Retriever.

 The back side of a DAM team. (Really, so you could see our Dream Weaver shirts, each with a photo of our own dog weaving.)

 Remington the Squirrelhund teamed with Spike the Border Newf  and Boomer the Border Collie.

 Remington and me.

Jeez, who ARE all those young handlers with our dogs?

Boost Almost Does Standard

SUMMARY: Video of one of Boost's better runs.

An agility video service (Agility In Motion) for whom I did a really tiny favor at the November USDAA trial actually videotaped one of Boost's Masters Standard runs and sent it to me. Here's what I wrote about the run in my private notes: "Very nice--nice table, nice cntcts. Turned wrong way after rear X and missed wv entry on a bad pull (meant to front X but chickened out) but going ahead @end and no ref/rnout."

And if you want to watch a fun archival video of theirs of me and Jake doing a Masters Jumpers course in April 2003, go here.

Doggie Junk Food

SUMMARY: What wakes up the dogs' salivary glands?

Team Small Dog posted an excellent recipe for dog training treats, with explanatory photos, which you must read before you read this. Because here's my response.

This was an excellent recipe for hot dog rewards and one that I have used on many occasions when chopped-up-tiny Rollover (or the healthy choice alternative^[1], which is what I usually use these days) wasn't quite special enough.

Although World Class Trainers have told me that hot dogs aren't special enough; they should be getting a whole roast chicken, probably with truffle sauce.

I don't get it. If my hypothetical dog (hypothetically named Tika) thinks that stale left-over puppy kibble is most delectable and so salivates heavily about it, why do I need a whole roast chicken? And do dogs really know the difference between orts (that's a useful everyday word I learned from crossword puzzles) of chicken and minutiae of hot dogs? I don't think so. But certain hypothetical big name trainers said that she felt sorry for my dogs if I thought that hot dogs were a special treat for them. Who am I to argue with success? I don't argue, I just usually use the stale leftover puppy kibble for everyday rewards.

And I use chopped-up Rollover (which I still call "rollover" even though I haven't used that brand in years) as a secondary level of escalation, and chopped-up hot dogs for a real treat. And, in-between, when I'm in a hurry and want something moderately stinky, not greasy (which kibble is, actually), very small (so dogs don't fill up on candy between meals), I use Zukes Mini Naturals, which have the added conveniences of being already chopped up into tiny pieces and of coming in sturdy resealable bags that can withstand almost anything^[2].

But I'm still not certain how much difference it makes--at least, with any of my dogs, "high value" treats tend to be either "food" or "toy" but without a lot of levels of distinction within those categories. You know when vendors at dog shows offer your dog a piece of freeze-dried Alaskan Wild-caught Salmon or Free-Range Montana Organic Smoked Buffalo and say, "my dogs really love this stuff, and look, yours does, too!", I frankly see no difference in the quality of the tendril of saliva coming from Tika's lips or the level of frenzy with which she takes the treat and most of the fingers holding it.

I read somewhere recently that dogs don't taste food in the same way that we do and don't make that much distinction among flavors. I believe it, for the most part. Tika can quickly identify whether something is either "food" (snatch it out of midair and swallow in one gesture), "probably food" (including fingers that might be holding "food" but you can't tell until you've actually closed your teeth around them), or "not food" (say, gravel, which you can spit out quickly, or bananas, which are obviously not intended for consumption by canids of any level of intelligence^[3]).

Or there's Boost, who has to (a) evaluate via olfactory methodology whether it's actual food before she'll even open her mouth, and (b) decide whether perhaps there's something going on that might involve running that would be more worthwhile than taking the time to eat. In which case, she might take any kind of food reluctantly after a call to her attorney, but she'd rather not. Hot dogs might make a difference, but it's hard to tell what level of duress she feels that she's under.

-----

[1]: With a name like Natural Balance, you know that it's healthy, right? Or Science Diet? Or Natural Choice? I'm sure that it's all honesty in naming, so of course manufacturers would call their brand Unidentifiable Ruminant ByProducts if it were really so. Right? Am I right?

(I also need to point out that, right now, the quoted string "unidentifiable ruminant byproducts", when put into google, comes back with exactly 0 results. Let's see whether we can effect a sea change in Google by (a) doing a search right now on the quoted string (quotes are important) "unidentifiable ruminant byproducts" and then by adding it to your web page. Aren't community projects fun? And educational?)

[2]: Except Jake experiencing a premonition that he was going to have massive brain seizures that night and not survive beyond the weekend and so needed to consume all reserve bags of Zukes (and everything else) stored in the van. After he was done, the bags were no longer resealable. But I digress.


[3]: Except Jake, who once ripped open my ex's gym back to get at a banana and, on another occasion, nearly tore his crate open to retrieve one that I had in my gear bag sitting next to the crate. There was a dog whose definition of "food" was considerably broader than Tika's. I had to remove gravel from his mouth on many occasions as he was trying to figure out how to chew it up to swallow it. In his last couple of years, I had to put screening on all of my potted plants because he was starting to eat the soil out from around the roots, and Boost was starting to think that this was a normal thing for puppies to learn from their wise and experienced elders. (See photo of typical agility home's potted plant with screen, dragon head, and Ethernet cable. )

Competing This Weekend and In the Past

SUMMARY: The dogs are looking forward to it, an so am I. Jake always did, too.

First trial since Thanksgiving weekend. Every time I've loaded stuff into the car, the dogs have started dancing around, only to look SOOOO disappointed when I leave without them. Breaks my heart.

Both dogs are in Masters this year, so I can do Bay Team's Masters-only Saturday and then come home. The trial is 2 hours away, so it'll be a long day, but it's under cover, so even if it's still raining, we're good to go. There's one of each of the regular five classes.

Time to remind myself where I am with titles and competing.

Boost: Has two Standard legs and one Snooker leg. In theory, she could get one each of Standard, Jumpers, Gamblers, and Relay and finish her MAD. Frankly, the odds of that are slim to none. I haven't been working on distance stuff with her much at all, AND she's another bar-knocker, AND we still have that refusal problem with jumps. But I'm sure it will be entertaining.

Tika: I would sure like to get that Gambler's leg to finish her Gamblers-Ch Bronze. That 15th leg has proven to be SO difficult to get, don't know why. Of course, I haven't been practicing distance work with her, either, doh! Nothing else is in reach this weekend.

Jake: Well, dang, he's been gone since last February. But a friend pointed out that, with the new rules for Lifetime Achievement Awards now combining Performance and Championship, maybe the little guy could get his LAA Bronze posthumously. So I went back and looked, but no such luck.

He had only 126 masters/p3 legs, counting the Grand Prixs. 52 masters, 12 GPs, 62 Perf's. It seemed like I moved him to performance late in his career, but he had only 4 years in masters and 3 years in Perf, so his "semidachshund semiretirement" went on for a while.

If I had entered him in more than just Jumpers during most of the last year he was competing, maybe he'd have gotten enough. But, no, I entered him in only one class each day at USDAA trials for all of 2005, and then retired him completely from USDAA in 2006. He WANTED to run more, but I was just worried about his arthritis. Just for the record, that's 87 runs that he didn't do in 2005 and 114 runs he didn't do in 2006.

I was NEVER sure that I was doing the right thing for him; he really wanted to run and never really relaxed at a trial until he had been on course at least once, sometimes twice. He did fine jumping at 12" in CPE the whole time, and 16" for a dog who started out jumping 24" didn't really seem like that much. And, furthermore, he never had trouble at 16" while he was doing that. I just didn't want to push it, which was the wise thing to do.

But, oh well--

Historical side note: You know, I think Jake was only in 3 DAM team events ever in his entire 10-year USDAA agility career and never Qed! And only 6 steeplechases, with only 1 Q. Shows how times have changed. Boost's been competing for just over a year, and she's already been in 8 Steeplechases and four DAM events.

Retrospective Photos

SUMMARY: From my collection, one of each dog.

For the Power Paws new years party, Instructor N is gathering photos and video clips from students for a show. These agility photos aren't necessarily the best ones of my dogs, but they are distinctive in one way or another. For this blog, for completeness, I added photos of my first two (preagility) dogs. I have very few photos of them, turns out, and most of them are lying down. Wish I had tons more, but nooo--these are the best photos of the whole dogs.

	Amber, my first dog, German Shepherd/Golden Retriever. Here she's about a year old. Got her at 6 weeks; she lived to 13.
	Sheba, our Siberian Husky. Came to us at about 6-12 months just after we got married and barely predeceased our marriage (her: 17 years; us: 19).
	Remington. He was about 10 months when we adopted him, and 3 when he started agility. I chose this one for the presentation because it shows the whole dog and has me in it, and I realize that it's been almost 5 years since I lost him, so there may be many people who know me but don't remember him. Almost inconceivable that it's been that long--he was just lying on that bed in the corner only yesterday, wasn't it?
	This remains one of my favorite photos of Jake, who joined us when he was 6.
	Tika, adopted at about a year old. Picked this photo for the presentation because it's the funniest weave photo I've ever seen.
	Boost is only the second dog I've had as a real puppy--about 3 months when she came home. I don't have a lot of photos of her doing agility yet, but this surely shows off her teeter speed--although lately she's often been sliding into a slam-down, which is a joy to behold.

(Oh, by the way, here's a photo of Boost's mom, Tala. Nah, there's no family resemblance--)

Comparing Jumpers and Coming Weekend

SUMMARY: Four agility dogs, different results.

My first two agility dogs, Remington and Jake, hardly ever knocked bars. It just wasn't something we ever worried about. Tika knocks bars. Looks like Boost is a bar knocker, too.

Some numbers: Remington's USDAA Starters/Novice record is vague; Jumpers didn't count for anything back then, so all that mattered was placement, which was time plus faults. I didn't track the faults. He placed anywhere from 1st of 13 to 3rd of 5 before he moved up to Advanced, where he quickly Qed in 2 of 4 Jumpers to move up to Masters (things wuz different then).

Then, he often didn't make time. (This was the long period when I was discovering that he slowed down in reaction to my stress.) When I finally figured that out--and how to deal with it--well, he Qed his last four Masters Jumpers in a row after Qing only 2 of the previous 17.

In all those Advanced and Masters runs, he knocked a bar only once, and he was running with someone else at the time.

Jake didn't come to live with me until he already had his novice AD title. With him, so much faster than Remington at the time, my problems were all learning to handle all over again; lots of runouts and refusals. In the 56 Masters and P3 Jumpers that we did, the only knocked bar I have recorded was after he had already run past a jump and then knocked the bar backjumping.

Tika. Well. 21 starters/novice Jumpers before she got a clean one--actually got TWO that same weekend. Then, in advanced, she Qed her second one, and I thought I was on a roll. ...I was, and it was all rapidly downhill. 13 Masters Jumpers until our first clean one, and that's what had held us back from our MAD forever. Then another 7 until our next clean one. Then the legs are sporadic--10 of the next 24. This spring, we got five--FIVE!--in a row, and I thought I was on a roll! Well... you know what happens... downhill again.

The Booster isn't as bad as Tika, but probably only because I'm not making as many handling errors (I hope). She got 1 out of 4 Startes Jumpers; knocked bars (and other problems) in the others.

Has earned only one Advanced Jumpers Q out of 11 tries. That's enough to get us into Masters if we can get that third Standard leg! (2 out of 16 tries so far) ...Two more chances this weekend at TRACS in Woodland.

A Fetching Story

SUMMARY: Dogs who provide a return on investment.

Is one never satisfied? Remington, a brilliant trick dog, wasn’t keen on “fetch.” I loved teaching him but ached for a fetcher. Then came Jake who, in his first hour with us, found each of the hundred balls abandoned by Rem. And—for the next 10 years—he dropped them at my feet, over and over. I wished for a dog less fanatical. Now there’s Tika, who chases but doesn’t pick up. And Boost, who picks up but requires a personal invitation to bring it. Oh, for Jake again! The fetch is always greener on the other side of the grass--

Ministory written in response to a challenge to write a story in exactly 99 words.

Today's Briefing

SUMMARY: Upcoming events, rodents, Jake's ghost

Only two weekends to our next actual trial. It's a CPE trial, so I'm hoping that I'll be more relaxed and focused on using it as a training experience with Boost (although CPE doesn't allow training in the ring, there's training and then there's training). On the other hand, I'll also be Big Chief Running Score Table Czar, being the resident expert on CPE scoring, so who knows how relaxed I'll really be. Fortunatly we've got a bunch of people who are good at score table.

Then--I planned my calendar out for this entire year. I was supposed to be doing another CPE trial 2 weeks after that. However, for whatever dumb reason, I missed the fact that the premium was out, and now the trial is full and I can't get in. Have I mentioned before how very much I despise limited trials for exactly that reason? There go my year's plans, down the tubes. If I had been counting on that trial for a specific purpose (as opposed to simply "convenient trial on convenient date", I'd really be floating my begonias. (Whatever THAT means. Sounds distraught, though, doesn't it?)

However, conveniently there's an ASCA trial the same weekend, and closer to home. ASCA agility is now the way NADAC agility was originally. Simple--Standard, Gamblers, Jumpers. And all the usual normal equipment. But I haven't done any of that in so long, that really I can't count it as a weekend for earning legs, because they'll be of pretty much no use to me. But they do allow training in the ring like NADAC did/does. So it's a fun match. A pricey fun match, but a fun match none-the-less.

Tika made it out of Novice to Open and Elite in NADAC, but so few of those were dual-sanctioned with ASCA that in fact according to them she's still in Novice Jumpers and open Gamblers. But apparently I can run her in Elite and they'll just apply any Qs to the levels I'm missing. For me, it wouldn't feel fair towards the other competitors to put her into Novice or Open, so Elite is what I'll do.

Apparently I didn't even bother to register Boost with NADAC or ASCA. So I had to send in her registration to get a number. Get this: It costs only $10 to register a dog. But you have to be a member to register a dog, and the minimum membership fee is $10. So what they're not telling you is that it costs $20 or more to register a dog. It's all in how you phrase it, I guess.

Her, I *will* enter in Novice because that's about where we belong, IMHO!

Even though she seems to be channeling Jake's ghost.

I used to have this old, low-slung, wrap-around-backed chair that was so crappy and ugly that I always had it covered with a throw. I kept it only because the dogs liked it. Jake in particular. One of his big hobbies was digging enthusiastically at the throw cover until he had bunched it up into a useless glob or thrown it off the chair entirely, and then going off on some other urgent chore. I'd put the throw back on. Next time he came by, he'd notice this travesty and do his artistic rendering of a lump of fabric again. This went on several times a day, for years.

When Boost came along and tore the chair into a zillion pieces, I finally got rid of it. Poor Jake, his main hobby out in the trash. I finally got him a nice replacement bed, a soft outer part with a removable inner cushion. In January of this year. Talk about bad timing. Anyway.

The bed has been sitting there. The other dogs have used it on occasion. But over the last couple of weeks, Boost has used it more and more, and Jake's spirit seems to have taken over her brain. (Sounds like a bad horror movie, doesn't it?) I've noticed her on occasion digging and pulling at that center cushion until she gets it out of the bed, and then she goes off on some other mission. So I put it back. Next time I notice, it's out in the middle of the floor again.

It's nice to know that some dog hobbies can be passed along from generation to generation.

I'd like mouse-catching to be one of those things, but apparently catching mice in the house is a lot harder than catching them outside. Outside, you can dig under the compost bin, then push on it until it tips over, then, after spending half an hour eating all the really nummy bits of kitchen waste that were inside the bin, you can actually get at the mice or rats and dispatch them. Not so easy to do with a fridge in the kitchen.

Maybe it was yesterday's weather--very unsummerlike, overcast and gloomy and windy and looking for all the world as if it wanted to rain (apparently did in san francisco & a few other places around the bay)--but the "mouse" that I have had in my kitchen and bedroom was hyperactive all day yesterday. I could hear him digging and chewing and dashing around in cabinets and behind the fridge and under the stove and dammit there was nothing I could do about it. Even saw him dash across the floor several times. Even the dogs were going nuts. They wanted to go into the living room, next to the kitchen, and were poking around eagerly at the couch as if they had seen and/or smelled the furry little beast right there. Boost even stood or lay in the kitchen for about two hours, ALMOST catching him as he scurried out-from-and-back-under. Driving me nuts.

So I finally took the two traps that had previously been sprung but caught nothing, and reset them and placed them more strategically carefully under the sink. I had barely sat down at my computer when i heard one go off. Bingo! I disposed of him in the trash can, sat down at my desk... and the other one went off. Got another one of the little buggers.

It's heartbreaking at the same time as it's a relief to catch them. I don't want or need their diseases and their pee and poop all over my house. But I do really love little furry wee beasties, and opening the cabinet and seeing the little bright black eyes (deceased) and little sweet furry bodies, oh, it tears me up. But catching them live and turning them loose outside isn't going to help me or whoeve else's house I'd put them near.

So I put THAT one in the trash can, along with the trap (I dont' bother trying to separate ex-mice from the traps--they all go to the dump together), went back into the kitchen... and heard one scamper among the items stored under the sink at the SAME TIME as one was gnawing under the cabinet on teh opposite side of the room. This morning, my housemate reported that one ran into his bedroom and back out again right in front of him. Dammit!

Anyway, bought a ton more traps today. Set them all over the place in clever strategic areas, but there doesn't seem to be quite as much hyperactivity in the heat of this sunny summerish day. Still, sat down at my desk, and heard one under the sink go off. Disposed of that one, set another one. Later--heard it go off again. So that's four down and I could've sworn that when I went up to my bedroom to set traps up there, I heard scurrying.

I've never had a mouse problem like this before, and it's a little intimidating. How many of them are there? One female can have up to 10 litters a year with up to a dozen or more babies per litter. Yikes. I might be doomed. We'll see whether I can get 'em all with billions of traps. I don't really want to use poison bait, which seems to be the more effective but scarier method.

And on that note--I'll be off to Wednesday Night 8:15 class shortly. It'll be a quiet night, as our usual instructor Jim is gone (Nancy's taking his place) and three class members--that I know of--are also out of town, including Ash and Luka, who won ALL THREE tournament events at the northwest regional last week. Jim says that he can't remember any dog ever doing that. So when they're back in town, we'll have a big old celebration. It's just amazing to think about how far he's come since he first joined our class as basically a novice, seems like not that long ago, but I guess at least 2 years now. And here the rest of us are, putzing along...

But it's good for a lot of celebrations. I hope he doesn't get tired of it and decide that it's all too easy. Although rumor has it that he might be thinking about a second dog so he can play with the big dogs--

Another Title for Tika

SUMMARY: The Gamblin' Dog

Oh, and by the way, that was Tika's Gamblers Champion title (10 Masters Gamblers Qualifying scores). Jake, whom I felt was a pretty good gambling dog, only ever earned 5 Gamblers Qs in Masters and 7 in P3.

But Jake earned a total of 29 Masters/P3 Jumpers Qs in his career, and 31 Standards, things that Tika has a very long way to go to match.

Only one more Snooker leg for Tika's Snooker bronze (15 Masters Qs), two Relays for the Relay Bronze, and one Standard for her Standard Championship.

A Few Jake Photos

SUMMARY: A few photos from the last year or so.

These have all been published in this blog.

December 2005	January 2007
January 2007	December 2006
November 2006	November 2006
Maybe more..	...later

The Last Weekend

SUMMARY: I sent this email yesterday.

November 2006

I am completely unprepared to make this announcement. On Saturday, Jake ran in two CPE classes at the Championship level and Qed in both, even placing 3rd among 7 considerably younger dogs. He celebrated by getting into the front seat of my car while I was elsewhere and consuming 5 or 6 bags of truly gourmet dog treats, his own dream come true.

In the wee hours of Sunday, he had a major seizure and spent half a day at the emergency clinic recovering and being tested, none of which revealed anything. It wasn't the goodies, thank the gods. The main likely thing left would be a brain tumor, although we didn't scan for it. By afternoon he was the same old Jake, and I could only hope that it was a one-of-a-kind occurrence.

Last night, two more major seizures overwhelmed his poor little Jakey brain. This morning, although his tongue barely functioned and his mouth, mind, and body hardly better, Jake the Obsessive Chowhound proved to be indestructible and perked up as much as the damage allowed when I pulled out the goodie bag, and he took goodie after goodie from my hands, obsessively oblivious to anything else in the world, right up until the merciful drugs put him to sleep for the last time.

Oh, Jakey-man, my old guy.

Jake Performance III Jumpers video from 2003; in 2004 he was USDAA Top Ten in PIII Jumpers.